European Football Championship 2024: Federal Network Agency: The relaxed problem solvers of the European Football Championship

“We come in uniform,” says Michael Kerd on the phone. So I will recognize him and the team from the Federal Network Agency in the mass of journalists in the media center of the Düsseldorf stadium. Most of the time, the people of the BNetzA, the nice abbreviation of this higher federal authority, are traveling inconspicuously at this European Football Championship – even though almost nothing would work without them.

Target “perpetrators”.

I noticed a colleague of Michael Kerd’s in Cologne as he walked intently through the rows of seats in the press box with a strange triangular device during the game. After a short contact with the headquarters in Bonn, the meeting in Düsseldorf is arranged. Nico Welling has a measuring receiver with him, “with a rod antenna,” as he explains. The direction finding antennas are triangular – “this helps locate the perpetrators,” says Welling and laughs. He is part of the testing and measurement team that handles interference or incorrectly assigned frequencies.

No goals, no comment: Without the Federal Network Agency, the European Championship would remain without images and sound. Dragana Hrnjez, the third member of the BnetzA in Düsseldorf, describes the distribution, monitoring and troubleshooting of the frequencies for the tournament as a “sovereign task”. More than 5,000 will be awarded at the European Championships – to television and radio stations or video portals from the 24 participating countries and several other nations, but also for radio devices used by the security authorities or instruments used by stadium technicians.

130 employees of the Federal Network Agency will do all of this during the four-week tournament, in the ten stadiums and in the International Broadcast Center in Leipzig. The work of the frequency planners and the testing and measurement service on site begins two days before each European Championship game. “On match day, the first team arrives seven hours before kick-off and is replaced by the second team three hours later,” says Dragana Hrnjez. One hour after the final whistle, work in the stadium is finished.

Not a state of emergency

The team with the blue uniforms stands out in the Düsseldorf media center – as a haven of calm between the always hectically working photographers, the excited television people and the strenuous press people. All three confirm that this major European event is not a state of emergency for them. “The European Championships are just a little longer at four weeks,” says Michael Kerd. With Formula 1, the major CHIO Aachen equestrian tournament and the European Handball Championships this year, Dajana Hrnjez lists examples from the sport. The Federal Network Agency also supports festivals such as Rock am Ring and major elections, adds Nico Welling. The organizers of the upcoming Summer Olympics do not want to miss out on these experiences; the Federal Network Agency will also be in action in Paris.

Everything has gone smoothly so far, says Michael Kerd before the decisive games of the tournament. “Sure, there were minor difficulties, but nothing that we couldn’t solve,” says Nico Welling. Because the internal preparations began six months before the European Championships, the people at BNetzA now seem so pleasantly relaxed.